No. Stop.
We swore to trust one another.
Granted...we didn't set any specific parameters for that “trust.”
We didn't express, in so many words, that our newly minted trust meant neither of us would sleep with another woman...
But I think that was kind of implied.
Wasn't it?
I tug at my curls in frustration.
And to punish myself for being lackadaisical, too cool, too terrified to really feel a complex emotion, I down the rest of my mud-puddly coffee in one gulp, scalding my tongue and scarring my throat.
Ouch.
Okay, that should probably be my last cup of Desert Siesta for a while.
Chapter Seven
Trudy picks up a palm-sized snow globe and shakes it, tossing glitter over a miniature scene of Niagara Falls. “They got it all wrong,” she says, holding the globe up to her purple-lined eye and peering through the blue-tinted water. “Backwards. The Bridal Veil Falls are on the wrong side. See?”
I take the snow globe from her and gaze at the sparkly scene. The resin backdrop is sloppily painted in shades of sky blue and white, but there's a well-meaning charm about the tiny Victorian pair of women standing on a ledge in the foreground, wearing form-fitting black gowns and holding parasols. Shoulders brushing, they, like me, look toward the distant—albeit incorrectly positioned—cascades.
I flip the trinket over and glance at the price: five ninety-five. “I think I'm going to buy this,” I say then, surprising myself.
“Really?” Trudy laughs, blue-violet eyes aglow beneath the fluorescent lights.
God, she's beautiful.
Today she's wearing her blonde hair loose, and her curves are sheathed in a vintage-style off-white dress printed with a pattern of Halloween cats—though Halloween is still weeks away. “Never too early to get your witch on,” Trudy had winked at me when I first admired her ensemble at the library.
After she clocked out for her lunch break, we bought some veggie dogs from a food truck, and for the last twenty minutes or so, we've been wandering the streets, popping into the tacky shops selling Niagara Falls keychains and t-shirts and velvet paintings. And snow globes.
“My mom had this thing about snow globes,” I explain, then cough into my hand. The air in here is warm—no, hot. Suffocating. I tug at the collar of my button-down shirt and shake my head, blinking. “She collected them. Bought one from every place she traveled. And because we came to Niagara Falls so often, she had about ten snow globes from here, all of them different. Some were actually kind of beautiful.” I look through the glass globe in my hand, smiling faintly, remembering.
“She had one like this, with two women in it... When she showed it to me—I was eleven—something happened, changed, inside of me. Suddenly I felt brave enough to come out to her. And her reaction was...amazing. She acted like I'd just told her the grass was green, like it was the most natural, obvious thing. Like it was no big deal at all.”
“That is amazing.”
“Yeah.” I hand the snow globe to the cashier, along with a ten-dollar bill.
“But...you said had.”
“What?” I accept my change and my bag and aim for the door, Trudy close by my side.
“Alex.” In a softer voice, she repeats, “You said had. Your mom had a thing about snow globes. Does that mean—”
“Oh. Yeah.” We step into the sunshine, and I tilt my head back to take in the white scatter of clouds overhead. When I meet Trudy's gaze, she's watching me with concern, with foreboding. I know that look... Instantly, I flash back to the funeral, to the glum, apologetic expressions that came over my parents' friends' faces when they met my eyes.
I shudder slightly but offer her a watery smile. “She died. My mom and my dad—there was an airplane crash over Peru and...” Glancing away, I sigh. “Ten years ago.”
“Oh, my God. Alex...” Trudy slips her arm around my waist, squeezes gently. “I don't know what to say. That's awful.”
“It was. It is.” We walk toward the intersection; ahead, the multicolored lights of the sky-scraping casino flash garishly, offensively. I squint at them, shrugging. “Funny thing about grief—it doesn't really ever end. It's been years, but the hurt's always there, just beneath the surface. I guess it gets easier to push it down. But sometimes it shoots up like...like a geyser. You relive that pain all over again. No matter how much time passes, it never really goes away.”
Self-conscious, I glance at Trudy and chuckle beneath my breath. “Sorry. I'm...in a weird mood. All of this ghost stuff... But you don't want to hear about—”
“No, I do. Alex, listen.” We pause in front of an Indian restaurant; Trudy faces me, taking both of my hands, exhaling a deep breath. “I want to know you. I want to hear everything about you. We...” She laughs. “We're kind of like that snow globe. Backwards. We started backwards. Sex first—and we missed out on the getting-to-know-you bits.”
“Hey, I've gotten to know your bits—”
“Set you up for that one.” She winks coyly, trailing a nail over the line of my cheek. “But I'm serious. Don't edit yourself around me. We both have a bad habit of keeping other people at arm's length—figuratively speaking, of course. Look...” Trudy drops my hands to rake her fingers through her blonde waves; a frown plays over her mouth, and her brows are furrowed. “I lost someone, too.”
“You did?” I place a hand on her shoulder, drawing her close.
“My brother Truman. Twin brother. We weren't identical, obviously, and we didn't have a psychic bond or anything—I wish we had—but he was my brother. We went through everything together. That horrible private school. Our parents' divorce. Truman's divorce. My many—many—failed career adventures...and relationships. He was my best friend. We survived. Together.” Her lower lip trembles. “Until we didn't. He got cancer and... God, it happened so fast—”
I pull her into my arms, whispering, “You were lucky to have each other. He was lucky to have you.”
“Thanks.” She leans back, wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. “It's been three years, but I still have his number programmed into my phone. Pathetic, right? But I can't bear to erase it. Sometimes I almost think I smell him nearby. Isn't that weird? He was always eating cucumbers,” she laughs. “Sometimes it feels like he just went on vacation, or stepped out for a cigarette. I trick myself into believing that, anyway—whenever thinking about him hurts too much.”
Eyes shining, Trudy twines her fingers with mine and tugs me along, further down the sidewalk, closer to the park bordering the falls. “Truman and I worked summers at the Cave of the Winds, just under the Bridal Veil Falls. Handing out ponchos and slippers to tourists, telling them to watch their step as they walked over the stone staircase leading down to the cave.”
“I love the Cave of the Winds.” I laugh softly. “I met my first post-coming out crush there, this girl with two ponytails named DeeDee.”
“DeeDee?”
“Well, it was the eighties. And I was—I don't know—fourteen? Anyway, I wandered off from the tour group, and then I heard someone saying, Hey! Hey! And when I looked toward the waterfall, there she was. Cute and blonde, with a hundred-watt smile. I couldn't help but follow her. She snuck me back into the restricted area, said, Hi, I'm DeeDee, and then she kissed me. A lot.” I smile. “Until Cordelia caught us and dragged me away. It's one of my best memories...” I trail off, because I've realized that Trudy has stopped walking. I search her eyes, am about to ask her why she's paused, but she's staring at me with the oddest expression: odd...but familiar—a mixture of awe and fear, as if she's seen a ghost.
I glance over my shoulder to make certain that Elizabeth and Victoria aren't floating somewhere behind me, but all I see is a family of living people wearing blue Maid of the Mist ponchos and eating bags of caramel popcorn.
“Alex, that—” Trudy breathes out, shakes her head, laughs—a small, tight-sounding laugh—before she swallows and confronts my gaze with w
ide, shining eyes. “That was me.”
“What? What was you?” I narrow my brows, confused.
“That girl. That kiss. Well, kisses.”
“Huh?” I tilt my head. “I don't—what are you talking about?”
In a half-frustrated, half-jubilant tone, Trudy says, “I was DeeDee,” one hand pressed to her chest, her glittery orange nails poking into the fabric of her dress. “It was my childhood nickname. Trudy. DeeDee. When I started eleventh grade, I insisted that everyone call me Trudy or Tru, because I thought DeeDee made me sound young and naive.” She bites her lip and regards me with her delicate brows raised. “I was never naive.”
“Whoa.” I turn around, walk a few steps in the opposite direction, nearly colliding with the poncho-clad family; kernels of popcorn drop to the sidewalk as they step aside. I turn around again, crunching popcorn beneath my heels and dragging my hand through my hair. “Wait. You were—you're serious? You aren't kidding? That was really you?”
“It was really me.” Trudy smiles faintly, though her skin has paled. She looks bewildered, shaken. “I was fourteen, too. And I thought about you. I knew you were a tourist—only tourists do the touristy things—so I figured my chances of ever seeing you again were next to nothing. Zero. But I still wished for it. Dreamed of you. Alex...” Trudy curves her fingers through my belt loops and draws me close, chest to chest, hip to hip. “You were my first real kiss.”
I blink at her, speechless.
And then our mouths collide—hot, wet, urgent—right there in the center of the sidewalk. A minute, two minutes later, we part, gasping, and lean our foreheads together, lips still parted, grazing. “This is all so...” I begin, searching for the right word.
“I know.” Trudy laughs huskily and offers me a cunning smile. Despite eating that veggie dog, her breath smells like cake, like candy. “Remember that book I showed you the first time we met in the library?”
“Mm-hmm.” I smirk. “The New Agey one with the clouds and rainbows on the cover—”
“Everything Happens for a Reason.”
“Yeah.” My smirk fades, replaced by an uncertain frown.
But what are the chances of my meeting and falling for the girl who kissed me in the Cave of the Winds two decades ago? About the same odds as my buying a house formerly occupied by a Victorian-era female archaeologist: astronomical.
Mouth dry, I ask her, “Do you honestly believe in stuff like that?”
“Well,” Trudy whispers, pressing her lips against my ear, “I'm beginning to believe that wishes come true. Same thing, right?”
Fingers linked, I wander with her back toward the library, unspeaking, listening to the roar of the river, the rush of the cars, the thud of my heart. Trudy pulls me into the library building behind her, neatly seats herself at her desk, crosses her legs, and regards me seriously, her hands templed beneath her chin. “Now, down to business, Ms. Strange.” She opens a drawer and pulls out a manila folder. “This is for you.”
I take the folder from her and smile at the handwritten label: Ghost Team Investigation: Cascade Avenue Victorian House, Trudy's Report. Flipping open the cover, I find a couple of typewritten pages and a post-it note stuck to the back of the folder. Who you gonna call? is written on it in sparkly purple ink, along with a phone number. “Your cell?”
“Figured we'd reached that stage. It's sweet and old-fashioned doing the “next time we run into each other” routine, but I'd like to have the option of sending you lewd texts and inappropriate photos when the mood strikes. Unless you'd object to—”
“No objections here. But fair is fair.” I lean over Trudy's desk, pick up a pen and reach for her hand, writing my cell number on her palm as she watches me with a raised brow, blonde waves gleaming like honey.
“Nice penmanship.”
“Thanks. I got an award for my cursive in second grade.”
“So you've always been good with your hands...”
I laugh softly, and when I draw back, she regards her palm, head tilted to one side. “You know, they say seeing ghosts together is a bonding experience.”
I chuckle again, watching her fondly. “Do they?”
“Mm. So next time we have...some privacy”—she glances at the patrons in the library with a pout—“I think we'll feel closer than ever before. And, technically, this is the longest relationship I've had in my life. We've been dating since we were fourteen, after all. Even if it was only in my imagination.”
I chuckle a little, blushing. “You make me sound like Puff the Magic Dragon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like your imaginary friend.”
“Well... Lucky me—I don't have to imagine you anymore.”
A young man in a blue button-down shirt and jeans suddenly appears beside me, says to Trudy, “Sorry. I just had a question about some books I need for a class. Do you have a second, or should I come back later?”
“Oh, I have to get back to the house.” I shrug, smiling. “It's a renovation day, and I'd feel guilty if I let poor Cordelia do all of the dirty work by herself.”
Trudy bends over her desk, expertly flicking the top button of her dress so that it comes undone, revealing the lace edge of her black bra. “Wish I could help you with that dirty work, Alex.”
My blush deepens as the man glances between the two of us, his freckled cheeks as round and red as an apple. “Um, really, I could come back—” he stammers.
“No, no, I should go.” I hold Trudy's folder against my chest and take a couple of steps backward. “See you soon?”
She holds up her palm, scrawled with my cell phone number. “I'll be in touch, Puff. Oh, and make sure to read that report tonight!”
Still reeling from the revelations of the afternoon, I wave goodbye and hurry out of the library, into the warm midday sun. My brain is electrified, too scattered to walk home right away, so I run over to the park and sit down on a bench beside the river. For a long moment, I watch the peaked waves, the seagulls diving, the ducks floating ever closer to the falls. Slowly my blood pressure levels out, soothed by the white noise of the water.
When I woke up this morning, the first thought that took shape in my mind wasn't, oddly enough, related to the Ghost Team or the apparitions.
All I could think of, imagine, visualize was Trudy in that club with Ruby...and what may or may not have happened afterward.
Still, when I was in her company today, I couldn't bring myself to ask her how her night had gone. I couldn't bear to know; I cringed at the risk of revealing my own insecurities...
But, damn, my mind won't stop looping.
Sighing, I open the folder across my lap and begin to read.
Trudy's account is straightforward, a concise description of the night's investigation. Of course, she made no mention of our kissing in the entryway, or of Ruby's insinuations, but at the very end, she scribbled a message in the same sparkly purple ink from the post-it note.
Tiger,
We're on to something big here. I can feel it. Weird thing is, I keep dreaming about Elizabeth. Never Victoria, only Bess. (And, well, sometimes you, but that's off-topic...and unfit for print. Remind me to tell you about it later...)
Let's put our heads together, Sherlock Holmes and Watson-style (always suspected they had a thing for each other; didn't you?) and figure it all out. Want to meet at my place tomorrow night, say six-ish? 333 Fourteenth Street, Apartment 6.
Bit of a drive, but I'll make it worth your while. Cross my heart.
T.
- - -
I roll over in bed, drained but sleepless after an evening of sawing and sanding, hammering and vacuuming. I scrubbed those fireplace stones until they gleamed. Cordelia ordered a pizza for dinner, because neither of us was functional enough to cook, but that was hours ago, and now my stomach is rumbling again.
I never realized how many calories manual labor can burn. I'm used to working in the sun on my dig sites, but none of that exertion compares to what I've been put
ting my body through since Cordelia arrived. My wrists hurt. My knees hurt. My shoulders are on fire. For the first time in my life, I feel old. Every time I move, my abused joints ache, creaking like the tree branches outside of my bedroom window.
Groaning, I swing my legs over the side of the mattress and stand up. I rake a hand through my tangle of curls, then rub my eyes, squinting at the bloodred wall before me. The remnant of a dream begins to manifest at the farthest edge of my consciousness.
Victoria again. I remember Victoria, remember her pale-colored hair whipping in the wind, casting her face in eerie shadows. She said something to me, held something out to me, and then—
No, no...
Then she fell backwards, over the Bridal Veil Falls.
Did she slip? I can't recall her slipping, only tipping, screaming—
“God.” I grip my forehead, shaking the image, that wail, out of my mind. I never realized how lucky I was, failing to remember my dreams; ever since I came to this house, this town, I've been remembering far too many of them—though, really, it's always the same dream, over and over again. Slightly altered, maybe, but always Victoria, always the falls.
And now...Victoria plummeting over the falls. Gruesome.
I wince, stumbling in the dark. I'm too tired for this. I'm stressed, overwrought. I'm starving. And I have to pee.
Quietly, I tiptoe into the bathroom, flicking on the newly installed chandelier. It's an antique that Cordelia and I were lucky enough to find at a local flea market, hung with strands of crystals and pearls to match the oceanic decor. Cordelia rewired it, just to be safe, and then installed it directly over the sink. During the daytime, the crystals reflect rainbows all over the white shell walls.
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